more practical, and (in harmony with our discussion in the previous
chapter) less differentiated from the men's.
But these, of course, are generalisations. These are the mere
translation of the social facts we have hypotheticated into the
language of costume. There will be a great variety of costume and
no compulsions. The doubles of people who are naturally foppish on
earth will be foppish in Utopia, and people who have no natural
taste on earth will have inartistic equivalents. Everyone will not
be quiet in tone, or harmonious, or beautiful. Occasionally, as I go
through the streets to my work, I shall turn round to glance again
at some robe shot with gold embroidery, some slashing of the
sleeves, some eccentricity of cut, or some discord or untidiness.
But these will be but transient flashes in a general flow of
harmonious graciousness; dress will have scarcely any of that effect
of disorderly conflict, of self-assertion qualified by the fear of
ridicule, that it has in the crudely competitive civilisations of
earth.
I shall have the seeker's attitude of mind during those few days at
Lucerne. I shall become a student of faces. I shall be, as it were,
looking for someone. I shall see heavy faces, dull faces, faces with
an uncongenial animation, alien faces, and among these some with an
immediate quality of appeal. I should see desirable men approaching
me, and I should think; "Now, if I were to speak to _you_?" Many of
these latter I should note wore the same clothing as the man who
spoke to us at Wassen; I should begin to think of it as a sort of
uniform....
Then I should see grave-faced girls, girls of that budding age when
their bearing becomes delusively wise, and the old deception of
my youth will recur to me; "Could you and I but talk together?"
I should think. Women will pass me lightly, women with open and
inviting faces, but they will not attract me, and there will come
beautiful women, women with that touch of claustral preoccupation
which forbids the thought of any near approach. They are private and
secret, and I may not enter, I know, into their thoughts....
I go as often as I can to the seat by the end of old Kapelbrucke,
and watch the people passing over.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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